E. E. Cummings’s, “anyone lived in a pretty how town” is a wonderful poem. Born in Cambridge, Massachusetts on October 14, 1894, Cummings strove to create his own unique writing style, mainly experimenting with hyplage. Years latter, he died September 3, 1962, after having created a legacy for himself in the niche of poets. Cummings experimentation of hyplage helped to spread his fame across the world. His rearrangement of sentence structure allows his poems, especially “anyone lived in a pretty how town”, to have alternate interpretations. Besides Cummings’s exquisite usage of hyplage, he uses many other poetry devices to richen his poems and incorporate hidden meanings. Cummings’s “anyone lived in a pretty how town” begins by describing a man named “anyone”. Cummings paints anyone as a happy, content man. He states, “He sang his didn’t and danced his did”(Cummings 4). Thus, anyone rejoiced in the things he had done and did not …show more content…
It can be concluded that almost all of the literary devices in the poem conveyed a deeper meaning. Critics think that this poem betrays the typical American life. This means having kids, dying, your kids having kids, then they die, etcetera. The cycle of the typical American life repeats itself in the same old boring fashion. However, anyone and noone break the monotony of the cycle, but when they die, life goes on without them. Thus, it is deduced that one of the main morals of the ballad is that all good things come to an end. Furthermore, Theo Steinmann states that “The most striking pattern is obviously the revolution of the seasons, which is indicated by the rotating list of their names” (1). This also contributes to one of the patterns in the poem, the circle of life. Therefore, the poetic devices identified not only help incorporate hidden meanings into the poem, but also help us to understand the general
Julia Alvarez, in her poem “’Poetry Makes Nothing Happen’?”, writes that poems do play a role in people’s lives. She supports her idea by using relateable examples of how poems might change someone’s life. Her first example is simple, poetry can entertain someone on long drives. This does not only aply to long dirves however, Alvarez uses this to show that poetry does not have to have a big influence on someone’s life, instead it can affect a person in the smallest of ways, such as entertainment. The second example describes poetry comforting someone after the loss of a loved one.
The speaker does not dwell on the hardships he has just endured, but instead remarks that he feels “painted and glittered.” The diction used towards the end of the work conveys the new attitude of the speaker. He is overcome with his triumph over the swamp, and now indulges in the beauty of new life and rebirth after struggle. Oliver’s strong diction conveys the speaker’s transformation and personal growth over
Some see the ugliness in the most beautiful things but others see the beauty in the most hideous of things. The poem William Street by Kenneth Slessor demonstrates this thesis statement as he talks about how he sees the beauty in the street that is renowned for its ugliness and the unsightly surroundings it is engulfed with. This poem's literary techniques and imagery gives the readers an insight into the environment and the surroundings that are seen vividly even though they are described through the use of foreshadowing. Each stanza gives the readers a different understanding on what is going on during the poem.
Cummings Explication The writing of the poem In Just by E.E Cummings was clearly a vibrant piece with a wide variety of elements of poetry. Cummings does an excellent job at drawing the reader in and keeping them entranced throughout the whole poem. The poem has many elements, and there are many theories about the poem, but two stand out in research; one, negative and one, positive. Let 's begin by analyzing the elements in the poem.
The speaker, instead of describing the swamp as dark and seamless, describes the swamp as “glittered” and “rich”. The abundance of life juxtaposes the previous image of scarcity in the swamp. At this point, the speaker is absent and the poem only focuses on the image of the swamp. This absence suggests that the speaker became part of the beautiful swamp. The vivid imagery of “fat grassy mires” and “succulent marrows” give the swamp a life-giving quality.
The romantic era lasted from 1800 to about 1860 and is recognized by its use of love, nature, or patriotism. A hero is normally involved in this story as well. The fireside poets, who were part of the romantic era, were well known for competing against British authors and writing specifically about the themes of America. The romantic era was mainly in the form of a poem. Hidden within the lines of these poems there is hints towards life and death.
Depending on how you read the poem, you may not hear it at first, but if you read slowly and carefully it is there. The speaker works diligently to keep her house running smoothly for her children and husband, but is not valued or appreciated. We can hear this tiredness in verses like “My son says I am average, an average mother, but if I put my mind to it I could improve” (5-8). The way that the speaker repeats an average mother. She is almost shocked, and angry that this is what her son thinks of her.
In the text, irony appears under various forms: as situational irony and verbal irony, and these different types of irony are used to illustrate the disillusionment of minorities through contrast. Voice is another formal element employed to put into juxtaposition opposite perceptions of America, leading to an emphasis on the disparity between the aspirational values of America and its reality, that is the unfulfilled promises. There are three distinct voices in the poem: the first one advances negative comments regarding America on how this country never fulfilled its idealized promises. Then, I will focus on how repetition strengthens the gap between the idealized values of America and reality, therefore emphasizing the disillusionment arising from the previously mentioned contrast. The idea of repetition reappears through various literary techniques, such as repetition, anaphora, alliteration, assonance, and meter.
“There was music from my neighbor's house through the summer nights. In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars. At high tide in the afternoon I watched his guests diving from the tower of his raft, or taking the sun on the hot sand of his beach while
Edward Hopper’s painting, House by the Railroad, portrays an abandoned, Victorian-styled mansion built adjacent to a railroad. Hopper depicts the lonely state of the house by emphasizing the shading of the house, colors, architectural design, and placement. In the poem, Edward Hirsch emphasizes the houses’s “emotions” through the usage of personification, diction and metaphors. Hirsch’s personification of the house provides us insight on how the house is feeling. For instance, he describes the physical appearance of the house by using words like “strange, gawky house”(142) and “faded cafeteria windows”(143).
In this environment, he is “facing the sun,” happy, open, and free. In closing, Philip Larkin uses literary techniques to make his point in his passage. He utilizes imagery and strong diction to convey his attitude toward the places he describes. Because of this, it can be understood that the speaker is unsatisfied with the crowded city and the habits of its residents.
A short poem similar to “Good Times” by Lucille Clifton normally would lack dimension and artistic value, however, through Clifton’s masterful writing and specific use of repetition, she elevates the poem to a noteworthy level, telling a complex story in a dense 18 lines. The short, repetitive poem lists an litany of momentary positives that juxtapose the more abundant times that are characterized by hardship. In focusing on “good times,” Clifton reveals the conflict between the present situation and previous memories. In “Good Times,” repetition is used in multiple ways to expose the complexity and depth of a single
Read the following E.E. cummings poem carefully, and then in a well-organized essay, analyze how cummings uses language to describe the setting as well as to convey mood and meaning. In the uniquely constructed Anyone Lived In A Pretty How Town, E.E. Cummings uses abstract grammar, symbolism and free indirect speech to subjectively describe a story of “anyone” living in a “pretty how town” that conveys the poem’s mood and meaning. The most distinctive and noticeable aspect of Anyone Lived In A Pretty How Town is its syntax.
Though the poet tries to create a happy mood at the beginning through her use of rhyme: “fell through the fields” and “the turn of the wheels” as well as reference to the “mother singing”, all is not happy. The word "fell" in the gives a sense of something sad and uncomfortable happening. This sense of sadness is heightened by one of the brothers “bawling Home, Home” and another crying. There is the use of personification in describing the journey: “the miles rushed back to the city” which expresses poet's own desire to go back, and the clever use of a list which takes us back to the place she has just left: “the city, the street, the house, the vacant rooms where we didn’t live
In this poem the speaker is talking about Buffalo Bill who was a performer and soldier who became famous for his “Wild West” shows that he put on, and who Cummings would have been aware of. On the page the lines